


In the Aftermath

by tryslora



Series: All Our Yesterdays [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Car Accidents, Community: fullmoon_ficlet, Divorce, F/M, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-23
Updated: 2013-06-23
Packaged: 2017-12-15 20:23:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/853687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryslora/pseuds/tryslora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When his human daughter is in an accident, Stiles is in shock. He doesn’t expect things to go from bad to worse until his ex-husband appears in the hospital waiting room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for prompt #23 - This Will Hurt at fullmoon ficlet on Livejournal. I am tentatively creating a series for it, because I know I'd like to come back to this storyline as prompts fit into it. So yes, if you like it, please feel free to subscribe to the series All Our Yesterdays, just in case! This was partly inspired by an entirely different Stackson hospital prompt on tumblr. Also, as always, I do not own the characters or world of Teen Wolf, but I do like to play with them.

Stiles is still in shock in the aftermath of the accident. He sits with his head bent and hanging low, elbows heavy on his knees. Allison sits next to him, her hand low on his back, rubbing small circles. He glances at Caleb, but Scott’s son looks away sharply every time he catches Stiles glancing at him. He can read the guilt in the boy’s eyes, can see the anguish while Scott tries to talk to him. 

He’s familiar with that look, the one that every werewolf gives every human when the werewolf walks away fine and the human can’t.

“Jackson.”

Allison’s surprised whisper catches his ear and Stiles looks up, mouth dropping slightly when he sees his ex-husband standing there, tie and jacket askew as if he has somehow run all the way from the airport. And maybe he has, Stiles doesn’t know. It’s the most undone he remembers seeing Jackson in a long time, fear making his eyes spark blue intermittently.

Stiles feels Allison’s hand tangle in his shirt, trying to keep him still, but he pushes her away, going to meet his ex. “What are you doing here?”

“Nikki—”

“So _now_ you’re the good father?” Stiles cuts him off with a sharp slice of his hand. “How did you even know about this? I sure as fuck didn’t call you. You’ve been ignoring her for the last ten years. She doesn’t need you now. She doesn’t even _remember_ you.”

Jackson takes a step back, fear and worry twisting his expression into something hard and angry. “She’s my daughter, too.”

Stiles laughs, sharply bitter. “No. Not really. Not since you left.”

“You kicked me out.”

“Tomato, tom-ah-to.” Stiles shrugs. “Get out, Jackson. We don’t want you here.”

“Mr. Stilinski!”

Stiles turns when the nurse calls, already on the move and not caring what Jackson does behind him. Nikki needs him right now, and he listens quietly as the doctor explains the procedure they need to do before Nikki can go into surgery. That they need his signature to knock his baby girl out, that they need his signature saying that he _understands_ everything that can possibly go wrong. That she’s going to be in pain. A lot of pain.

It twists in his gut that he saved Nikki when she was a baby, but he can’t save her now.

He bites his tongue and signs the papers, then falls back into the chair next to Allison, fingers pressed against the bridge of his nose. When his vision clears, Jackson is gone.

Good riddance. Stiles doesn’t want to see him.

#

He dozes fitfully while Nikki is in surgery, exhaustion finally taking over after long hours of waiting. He vaguely notices that at some point in the dark hours of morning, Caleb goes home with his grandmother. Stiles feels the whisper of Melissa McCall’s touch on his brow, her soft words of worry and comfort, and he is thankful for that.

“The hospital called him,” Allison’s voice is a murmur as Stiles winds his way back into the waking world. “He grabbed the first flight here and came straight from the airport.”

“Tell me you’re not talking about Jackson.” Stiles sounds like gravel and dirt, voice rough from worry and sleep. “Tell me he’s not still here.”

“He’s her father too.”

Even Scott is defending him. Fuck. Stiles shoves both hands through his hair, scrubs the heels of his hands against his eyes. “Technically, neither of us is her father,” he says bluntly. “We adopted her together, but she’s been only mine for the past ten years. If Jackson cared—”

“He does care.” Allison sits next to him, taking her hand in his and squeezing hard. “Trust me, Stiles, Jackson cares.”

He skewers her with a look. “Really? Just because you’ve managed to stay friends with him…”

“He’s taking her pain away.” Her expression is gentle, kind. “This isn’t about friends or not friends, or the fact that he’s been in New York for ten years. This is about him loving his daughter still. And maybe you should give him that chance.”

“What do you mean?” Academically, Stiles knows the answer. He knows what werewolves can do, and he assumes that’s what she means.

“Nikki came out of surgery an hour ago. Jackson went _into_ surgery before that. They were having difficulty keeping her stable, and when they came out, he was awake and you weren’t, and so—” She interrupts Stiles before he can say something. “He’s her _father_ , Stiles. You may be divorced, but he still has that right, so try to act your age about this. It’s like he reduces you back to being sixteen, and you are long past that.”

She’s right. Stiles is over forty now, and his _daughter_ is sixteen and dating Scott and Allison’s son, and they were in an accident and now Jackson… Jackson’s here, and it’s just one more thing that Stiles’s frayed mind can’t handle.

He pushes himself to his feet, staggers to the nurse’s station. They all still know him there, and with gentle smiles they direct him to Nikki’s room.

Jackson sits by her side, their hands tangled together while Nikki sleeps. A gentle pulse travels along the black threads on his forearm, and Jackson winces as he gathers that pain inside of him.

Stiles coughs into the silence and Jackson looks up, then immediately casts his gaze to the side, avoiding meeting Stiles’s eyes.

“I don’t want to fight right now,” Jackson says quietly.

“Yeah. Not in front of Nikki.” Stiles can agree with that, and he pulls a chair up on the other side of the bed. He takes Nikki’s hand in his, lightly stroking over the ashen skin, trying not to touch where the IV needle is taped to the inside of her wrist. “They had trouble finding a vein. She was dehydrated because they were drinking.” He’s not going to yell about the drinking; he remembers his own high school life all too clearly to be upset about that.

“Which one was driving?”

“Caleb, and yeah, he feels guilty as shit. He figured since he doesn’t get drunk, he’d let her have a few and he’d take care of her. Then there was a deer, and the car swerved, and…” Stiles’s voice trails off. He hasn’t seen the car up close and personal yet, but he’s seen pictures of the twisted wreckage. “If he weren’t a werewolf, he’d be dead. If he hadn’t dragged Nikki out of there, she’d be dead too. But he healed, and she’s… she’s human.”

Their sweet, darling, human daughter, that they’d adopted when they were just twenty-five. Stiles remembers those days, when Nikki was a baby, and the long exhausting nights that ended with him and Jackson tumbling into bed, tangled together.

The problem is, he also remembers the fights, and Jackson’s new job, and the ultimatum that sent Jackson to New York while Stiles and Nikki stayed in Beacon Hills. In the end, Jackson hadn’t loved them enough.

“She’s going to be okay.” Jackson’s free hand covers Stiles’s and Nikki’s joined hands, squeezing lightly. For just a moment, Stiles can look at him through the haze of what they once had, and see the rumpled, beautiful, angry man he once loved. Then the moment fades, and all he remembers is the kind of pain that no werewolf can leach away.

“She has to be.” Stiles lifts Nikki’s hands to his lips, brushing a light kiss against her fingertips. “She’s all I have left.”

He rests again, lulled to sleep by the steady breath of his daughter and the faint beeps of the machines. If Jackson’s presence and touch is a comfort as well, Stiles doesn’t look at it consciously. Jackson isn’t a part of their life anymore and he can’t afford to let him back in. No matter how good it feels to be a family again.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Indestructibles - An All Our Yesterdays Fanmix](https://archiveofourown.org/works/891310) by [BdrixHaettC](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BdrixHaettC/pseuds/BdrixHaettC), [OnTheGround2012](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnTheGround2012/pseuds/OnTheGround2012)




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